Why must even our wildest fantasies about what Black people could create be tethered by the very structures and forces that have been at the heart of our domination, repression, and that have fueled our premature death?

In an openly white supremacist political moment in the U.S. where racism exudes from the highest office, where Republicans have escorted or beaten Black men and women out of political rallies, celebrated openly racist violence, and then appointed a Black person to stand behind 45 to hypocritically verify his lack of racism, it is very nice to see Black people loving themselves.

You can dream of Africa—picture it as a land of poverty or a land of safaris, but you have a hard time seeing it for what it is, a place of human beings with all their complexities trying to make their own history.

We know of its lush landscapes and rich resources, cutting-edge technology and skilled warriors but what does Wakanda sound like? What are the musical creations that define its culture and populations?

The grandmothers would have been the bio-vibranium partnered with the meteorite that took all of the credit for the wonders of Wakanda. If T’Chaka’s mother were alive, she would have stood down Queen Ramonda to rewrite the prodigal son narrative and make the absent mother the heralded returnee.

The work of the world is “as common as mud” and is done by women...but in Black Panther the women do not love each other the way they love the central man in their lives, or the heteropatriarchal state he controls.

Black Panther offers an opening to think about real world struggles for liberation by interrogating the film’s portrayal of the theme of community empowerment and its lack of engagement with underlying questions related to state violence.